THROUGH THREEFOLD TENSION 185 



rough materialism. Its intellectual supporters 

 considered unrestrained action in commerce and 

 industry as but a further realization of the 

 liberty that was natural to a rational being; free 

 trade was a right of man like free speech and 

 free worship; abolition of the protective tariff 

 was a step toward the perfection of the indi 

 vidual and the race. In Cobden s expositions 

 this philosophy was most skilfully blended with 

 consideration of the practical needs of the Brit 

 ish merchants and manufacturers. The latter, 

 however, were little concerned about abstract 

 liberty and the progress of the race. Free trade 

 with them was a matter only of markets. Ex 

 pansion of commerce, new consumers of com 

 modities, enlargement of plants to the point of 

 maximum production and profit these summed 

 up the advantages of free trade from the busi 

 ness man s point of view. To him colonists 

 were but customers; to the idealists they were 

 but men, with natural rights. That they were 

 Englishmen and were determined by that fact 

 from the beginning of the world to changeless 

 political union with other Englishmen, was a 

 conception that had no place in the thought 

 of either element of the free-traders. The fed 

 eration of the world and not imperial feder- 



